Game Review: Octopath Traveler

Octopath Traveler is 2018 JRPG published by Square Enix. In it, the player forms a party of eight distinct characters each with their own “path action” that allows for a unique interaction with NPCs in the world. These range from recruiting them to temporarily aid you in battle as the Ophelia, the cleric, to stealing candy from children as Therion, the thief. These Path Actions all stem from a given characters “job” and characters can eventually be equipped with a sub-job that is either one of the primary jobs of a fellow party member, or one of four hidden super-jobs. Each character also has their own distinct story unrelated to all the other characters for the four main chapters that comprise the game. Each character’s story can be completed individually, with no requirements of progressing in any other.

Everything Old is New Again

What makes Octopath Traveler so compelling is its constant attempts to reimagine the classic JRPG mechanics and aesthetics. Beginning with aesthetics, Octopath Traveler features a “retro-HD” visual design. The characters, monsters, and many locations are all sprite-based, but the game was built in the Unreal 4 engine, allowing for a full range of modern graphic technologies (such as heavy bloom or photorealistic water) to exist alongside the classic sprite work evocative of the 8-bit era. This is a remarkably ambitious choice in visual design as most games that feature a retro aesthetic try to either perfectly emulate third generation console hardware limitations or subtly enhance them with minor tweaks, such as an expanded color palette (specifically Shovel Knight, in the later example). In place of staid recreation, the developers are to my knowledge the first to attempt a genuine evolution of a sprite-based game to modern graphical processing power.

Every RPG that wants to be successful must distinguish its battle system in some way, be it the introduction of an Active Time Battle (ATB) system of Final Fantasy IV or the near endless possibilities of party composition in Pokémon, and Octopath Traveler is no exception. Octopath Traveler features a “Boost” and “Break” system that owes a heavy conceptual debt to the developer’s previous work in the Bravely Default series. Characters build up Boost Points which can then be used to make attacks and abilities more powerful or hit multiple times. The second potential use of the Boost system is important as enemies can only take a certain amount of individual hits from weapons and spells they are weak to before they “Break” and can no longer move on the turn they are broken or on the next turn. Broken enemies also take additional damage. With bonus experience, money, and Job Points (needed to unlock new abilities for a character’s jobs) awarded for completing a battle without taking damage, in a single turn, and executing a break on an enemy, the system does a remarkable job of forcing players to think strategically in battle. This again is a distinct evolution of the JRPG genre’s classic conventions. While an ATB system forces a player to think strategically, it does so in a frantic manner as quick reflexes are the key to managing the characters’ action economy. The Boost system radically inverts this by incentivizing players to adopt a much more deliberate playstyle in order to Break enemies to maximize damage done and minimize damage taken.

With Feeling This Time

Undoubtedly the weakest part of Octopath Traveler is its narratives. Or more accurately, some of its narratives. Each character’s chapters (aside from Primrose, the dancer) vary so wildly in consistency that it’s almost baffling. For example, Cyrus the scholar’s second chapter features a near throwaway villain and barely serviceable plot thread, while his fourth and final one has a genuinely excellent exploration of why he is both a scholar and a teacher that would hopefully resonate deeply with anyone involved in education. Despite its specific narrative short comings, this story structure also offers a fresh take on linear storytelling, not just for JRPGs, but for all narrative driven games. Rather than conceiving of the party as being on a grand quest, each character is instead following their own very personal story and supporting their friends and travelling companions in their own.

Breathe Life Into the World

To conclude, I’d like to bring attention back to Path Actions mentioned at the beginning, specifically those of the apothecary Alfyn and the aforementioned Cyrus. Both characters can speak with NPCs to gain new information, be it the location of a hidden item or information necessary for a quest. What makes this such a significant innovation is not the ability “speak-with-NPC,” but the fact that every single NPC in the game has a unique, paragraph long blurb written about their lives and they are universally excellent. By giving every single character a compelling life story, NPCs in Octopath Traveler inhabit the world, rather than simply exist in it. This turns even throwaway tropes characters, like nameless barmaids, into realized characters in their own right. While games like Watch_Dogs may give players a cursory glance at NPCs' lives through their professions and incomes, or a multitude of games may offer a glossary of story-centric characters’ histories, Octopath Traveler offers a truly revolutionary new way to breathe life into a game world. A narrative focused game giving every single character the dignity of a story throws down a proverbial gauntlet to other developers, challenging them to think much more deeply about the NPCs that exist in the worlds they create.